When I went to Apple's site, all I got was annoyed.
I had two browser windows open (both maximixed), one reading through slashdot posts, the other waiting for Apple's page to load (viva the Slashdot Effect-- even if it wasn't the S.E. this time). I'm in the middle of reading someone's post, and boom. Apple's site has wrested the focus away from my other window, and instead of Slashdot goodness, I'm faced with Apple ad-copy (jeezus, their "sage" iMac is fugly).
Granted, I was meaning to glance over Apple's page (I was curious about their final design decisions for the buttonless mouse), but only when I was good and ready to. I hope that this sort of thing doesn't spread.
It's a new one. Mind you, it'll probably last as long as the original Overpower CCG.
Am I the only one who looks longingly back at the days when product tie-ins happened long after a TV show or movie had proven itself? This new stunt (a tie-in CCG) is even worse than the usual crap.
An X-Men CCG? Yep, it's coming. I got a free tie-in comic (filled with Toys R Us ads-- apparently they're the only licensed distributor for X-Men merchandise) with admission, which included a couple of ads for the upcoming CCG, and something called a "Lenticular Collectible"-- which either means that they're cheap holograms, or they're bringing POGs back.
Oh, yeah, and the obligatory action figures are downright fugly.
Mind you, there *have* been complaints regarding the Evangelion DVDs, even after they were released. This site has details on most (if not all) of the issues involved.
How long did it take MS to provide an ambidextrous Intellimouse? Given Apple's recent excursions into the "avant garde," can we seriously expect them not to fuck this thing up in some critical way?
I realize that the images are only purported prototypes, but that design is utterly wrong. Iotaborg had an excellent point when he pointed out that the mouse isn't ambidextrous, but there's more. Take a closer look: the beast is designed so that your fingers fit into little indentations on the front-- a potentially big problem if you've got large hands, or long fingernails.
Personally, I'm sick of ergo devices-- I'm left handed, I type with my keyboard in my lap, and objects that are specifically designed to feel like I'm putting the wrong glove on are extremely annoying. Yes, I realize that only about 10% of us are southpaws (wherever the hell that appelation came from), but is it really that much harder to construct an ergonomically-pleasing ambidextrous device?
Personally, my vision for the next step in the evolution of the mouse looks like a potato. It's big, it's oblong, and you can hold it firmly with either hand. It's anyone's guess if you'll be able to use it with any efficency, though.
It seems we're no longer raising children, but breeding consumer pods. Fuck it, let Mattel and MTV raise your kids, I guess.
You make it sound like people aren't doing this already. My roommate (she who so stridently claimed that "my child will never watch television") has been using the tube as a babysitter while she plays Ultima Online. My sister babysat a child who would spend at least six hours a day watching tapes of Barney and Friends-- and would howl like a banshee between the time the tape ended, and Carolyn popped the next one in (bear in mind that this was a direct instruction from the child's parent).
The MTV Kids generation is all around us, drooling in their oh-so-expensive Gap Kids and Tommy H. wardrobes.
Part of the problem is, people are having kids, and they don't give a damn past the birth. There are a lot of affluent folk out there who just want the kids (and the dog) for show-- to prove that they're "good, family people;" there are a lot of less-affluent people that are having kids, and can't afford not to have the TV babysit for them. On the third hand, there are people who are having kids, and just don't give a rat's ass one way or the other.
Hey! Spacetruckers is the Dark Star of the Nineties! Yes, it had an astonishingly low budget, and it stole from any number of sources (anyone else notice that the pirate ship looked like a cross between Babylon 5 and Captain Harlock's ship?), but it was intentionally bad. There's a great deal of difference between going out of your way to make a terrible movie, and assembling a "fromage" to a pulp SF author.
True, but it's highly unlikely that it would survive more than a year; there are several distinct sets of forces (to go with its "distinct society") that would almost certainly doom it.
First off, are the outside forces. In a nutshell, no-one particularly likes Quebec. The Atlantic provinces hate it, the central and Pacific provinces are ambivalent, and for the most part, the States really don't care one way or the other. Hell, even France knows well enough to keep out of Quebecois affairs.
Second, are the internal forces. Generally, there are two camps in Quebec: Francophones, and everyone else. The francophones have a very long history of declining birth-rates, and annoying everyone else. One of the instigators of the failed secession referendum has been quoted as saying: "We were beaten by money, and the ethnic vote." Cases in point include the Great Bear hydro-electric project (which would have flooded a gigantic area of northern Quebec, causing insane amounts of ecological damage), and the Oka crisis (in which the Q.gov sold a known Indian burial ground to a developer, to be made into a golf course. The resulting standoff lasted months). The Indians living in Quebec have made loud noises regarding a secession back into Canada should Quebec separate (which the Q.gov has tried to declare illegal... spot the irony). Just about every last non-francophone (and non-francophone business, both of which outnumber Quebecois by a significant margin) has plans to move out of the province, and others have plans to form guerrila militias to harass or overthow the Q.gov. In fact, the antics of one such militia (the Front Du Liberation Du Quebec, or FLQ) prompted the temporary institution of martial law.
Third, are the economic forces. Secession revolves around Quebec continuing to use the Canadian dollar, Quebecois having dual Quebec/Canadian citizenship, Quebec entering NAFTA, and a small host of other elements that would basically make Quebec into a sovereign parasite bisecting Canada at about the mid-thigh region. Needless to say, the odds of any of that happening are just about nil.
Oh, and besides all that, there's nothing "odd" about Shadowrun "predicting" Quebec's separation-- they've been making noises about it for-bloody-ever.
Amen to that. Oh, and forget about Shadowrun being some sort of prescient forerunner to our current perceived reality; everything in there (apart from the magic-is-back-and-the-Indians-have-taken-North-Ame rica-back part) is a theme that's been flying around since at least the birth of cyberpunk, which predates the original Shadowrun rules by a great deal of time.
In case anyone missed the local cluetrain, the rant is as much of a joke as Daikatana. I mean, arguing linguistics, causation, and Suspension of Disbelief as related to a bad game intro is supposed to be taken seriously? Please.
Oh, and please don't get me started on Star Dreck.
Yes, but there is a great deal of difference between your professors and the introduction to Daikatana. First, the "stereotypical" reversal of "r" and "l" sounds by Japanese speakers is due to their similarities (I'd dig out one of my linguistics textbooks, but I don't feel like it). It really can't be helped.
Second, since the first episode is set in Japan, and the main character is presumably Japanese, and the old man is most certainly Japanese, it stands to reason that they may actually be speaking... wait for it... Japanese!
Now, following this line of reasoning, it can be safely assumed that the dialogue has been translated into English, possibly via Suspension of Disbelief. Since the dialogue is a translation of two native Japanese speakers conversing, the old man's confusion of "r" and "l" sounds would not have been translated through-- the sound differences are irrelevant in Japanese, and therefore irrelevant to the translation. Since his "r" and "l" sounds are confused, even after translation, it's patently obvious that this confusion was intentionally included; unfortunately, it's impossible to tell if its inclusion was supposed to provoke indignation, laughter, this rant, or even more controversy over Romero's apparent disconnection from reality.
As an aside, there's apparently a team working on an Unreal Tournament TC called "Marathon: Resurrection." Details are at Marathon: Resurrection, if anyone's interested.
Actually, you should probably avoid Armitage III, unless you feel like watching a gawdawful Blade Runner rip-off. If you are going to watch it, avoid the dubbed version like the plague.
Everything else on the list, go for it. Prepare to be confused by Utena, though.
Oh, yeah, while I'm at it: Silent Moebius (the movie). Weird girl/magic/SF anime.
Whoops, before I forget: definitely track down Tenchi Muyo! (the OAVs are available in a DVD collection), and El Hazard: The Magnificent World. Granted, they've both got strong sex-farce elements, but the animation is just effing gorgeous, and they're extremely well written.
Re:Video stores which != Blockbuster
on
Essential Anime
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· Score: 1
then there was another one i remember, but i don't know the name of it...had a group of pilots flying spaceships battling alien beings...something like that anyway..
Unfortunately, that statement reminds me of a post I saw on usenet a few years ago, asking about an anime involving "girls with gemstones or coloured things on their foreheads." Either could be used to describe at the very least a half-dozen separate shows, which leads me to my point. Rule of thumb for everyone out there: if you come across a cool anime, but you don't know what it is, find out! Search the house for the TV guide, check the channel's website, or even go so far as to tape half a minute to show to your local screaming otaku (chances are, he'll know what it is). If you don't, you'll probably be sorry.
Oh, yeah, and Gunsmith Cats is definitely anime. If you're into vehicular anime, try to track down a copy of "Riding Bean"; it's (s'far as I can recall) a prequel to GsC.
Oh yeah, definitely NGE. If you can, get the DVD versions-- I think they've just started releasing them. I've got a copy of Collection 0:1 sitting beside me, and I can say that it's just frigging gorgeous. It's got the first four episodes with Japanese, English, French (trippy), and Spanish (brain-damage inducing) dialogue, and optional English subtitles; it also has a few cute extras: a few character bios, and a collection of ADV's better trailers (with my favourite Eva trailer: gratuitous explosions choreographed to "Ode to Joy").
Maybe this is Apogee's (note the gratuitous possessive) attempt to become relevant again-- their answer to Romero's "Suck it Down!"(tm). I really don't care one way or the other-- I haven't seen any good code come out of Apo-gee since they published Commander Keen 4. Thanks to this stunt, I'm going to walk up to every stranger I meet on the street, tell them that "Apogee sucks!", and convince them not to purchase Apogee products. If I can get through to even one person before they drag me off to the mental ward, then I will have made a difference.
Maybe I'm missing a level of sarcasm here but you can not hide your social assistance and income tax history from the government in the same way you can not hide your birth information from your mother.
I, and hopefully everyone else, am completely cognizant of the fact you pointed out above. It was this assumed universal cognizance, as well as the rather snarky additional comments ("non-breeding male", et al) that led me to assume that it would not be necessary to explicitly mark that section as sarcastic.
"As an added safeguard, any of it going for research will not have personal identifiers."
Okay, what about the data that has already been used for "research" purposes?
"The database includes information on everyone's address, education, marital status and ethnic origin. It also tracks a person's employment and social assistance history, and their income tax records."
Okay, just for the record: Address: foo@bar.ca; Education: enough to see through this garbage; Marital Status: Non-Breeding Male; Ethnic Origin: um, er, Canadian?; Employment, Social Assistance and Income Tax history: uh-uh, forget it-- there's no way I'll let the government have that information...
Are they really disposing of this information? Hell, no-- this is the Canadian government we're talking about. Jeez, the "opposition" is opposed to it only because they're not the party in power-- if the Tories get in after the next election, I can guarantee that this database will be reactivated, with a minimum of fanfare, and as much obfuscation that taxpayer's money can buy. No-one involved with the project really gives a damn about it getting hacked-- they're just waving ten-dollar words like "encryption" and "longitudinal" to confuse and pacify the proles until the next big government cack-up comes down the pipe (which will probably be in a week or two).
There was a greater spirit of community "helpfulness", too. A few years back, you could find a page that would have diagrams and downloads for whatever (case in point, patterns for medieval-style clothing, for SCA people). Nowadays, all you'll find are price lists and Sales Associate links to Amazon & co.
While there isn't anything in the specs regarding denial of access for refusing their SuperCookie, there are a number of sites currently extant that will refuse to deal with you for not allowing them to drop a cookie on your browser-- several banks, and Bell Canada, to name just a few. All these sites have to do is change their normal cookies over to the new spec, and 999 out of 1000 visitors will hand over their info without blinking.
That's not even the half of it, when you consider the sheer amount of material that gets stopped (or worse, destroyed) at the border because some pinhead (or committee of pinheads) declared it obscene. Or, perhaps more accurately, some pinhead declared the end-user address obscene-- Customs has been in the habit for years of arbitrarily "blacklisting" certain retailers and other entities, and randomly stopping shipments of various goods to them, while identical shipments are sent on to other (safer?) retailers. This timeline provides a chilling look into the activities of Canada Customs over the last century.
Closer to home, a friend who works at a local programming-house regaled me with the tale of how they had to send a PC Stateside to be checked out (they write device drivers for high-end video-capture systems, and any serious hardware issues have to be dealt with by the manufacturer's techies); when it was returned, they discovered that the kids at Customs had opened it up (maybe they were searching for contraband copies of Omaha the Cat Dancer), let it get about half-filled with styrofoam packing peanuts (you know, the ones that hold a charge for longer than your average battery), and then put the case back on-- securing it with one of the originally six screws (perhaps they caught the other five portraying prurient images of anal sex). Needless to say, my friend and his co-workers were furious (and rather fortunate that the system was still functioning).
Now, back to the topic. Am I surprised that HR has a database like that? Not at all. Am I surprised by any numb-witted stunt that any Canadian political organization does? Not at all. Do I trust them not to fsck up, and distribute my data to anyone who asks? Again, not at all. Is anything going to be done about it? Nope-- unless, of course, someone wants to stage a daring night-time commando raid to destroy their hard-drives and backups (assuming, of course, that their database doesn't still only exist in hard-copy). Am I angry about this? You betcha. I don't collect air-miles, I surf with an old copy of Atguard, and I pay for almost everything with cash-- granted, it's a bit more of a pain, and I'm not getting the "rewards" that I could be, but since I'm trying to reduce my trail (both paper and electronic), I feel that I have some right to complain about the skulduggery being perpetrated on me.
Finally, I have one question: what is going to happen to this database? Will it be shared with other agencies (perhaps to "reduce redundancy")? Will it be (gods forbid) sold to a third party? Or are they going to post all of it to the net, like Canada411?
Slashdot Mirror
I had two browser windows open (both maximixed), one reading through slashdot posts, the other waiting for Apple's page to load (viva the Slashdot Effect-- even if it wasn't the S.E. this time). I'm in the middle of reading someone's post, and boom. Apple's site has wrested the focus away from my other window, and instead of Slashdot goodness, I'm faced with Apple ad-copy (jeezus, their "sage" iMac is fugly).
Granted, I was meaning to glance over Apple's page (I was curious about their final design decisions for the buttonless mouse), but only when I was good and ready to. I hope that this sort of thing doesn't spread.
Am I the only one who looks longingly back at the days when product tie-ins happened long after a TV show or movie had proven itself? This new stunt (a tie-in CCG) is even worse than the usual crap.
Right now, I'm waiting for X-Men cereal.
Oh, yeah, and the obligatory action figures are downright fugly.
I realize that the images are only purported prototypes, but that design is utterly wrong. Iotaborg had an excellent point when he pointed out that the mouse isn't ambidextrous, but there's more. Take a closer look: the beast is designed so that your fingers fit into little indentations on the front-- a potentially big problem if you've got large hands, or long fingernails.
Personally, I'm sick of ergo devices-- I'm left handed, I type with my keyboard in my lap, and objects that are specifically designed to feel like I'm putting the wrong glove on are extremely annoying. Yes, I realize that only about 10% of us are southpaws (wherever the hell that appelation came from), but is it really that much harder to construct an ergonomically-pleasing ambidextrous device?
Personally, my vision for the next step in the evolution of the mouse looks like a potato. It's big, it's oblong, and you can hold it firmly with either hand. It's anyone's guess if you'll be able to use it with any efficency, though.
That would be the Rasputins. Takes a big man to satisfy the Queen of Russia, don'cha know?
On the off chance that anyone's interested, here is the link to the Center for Democracy and Technology.
Or Harry Buttle, perhaps?
You make it sound like people aren't doing this already. My roommate (she who so stridently claimed that "my child will never watch television") has been using the tube as a babysitter while she plays Ultima Online. My sister babysat a child who would spend at least six hours a day watching tapes of Barney and Friends-- and would howl like a banshee between the time the tape ended, and Carolyn popped the next one in (bear in mind that this was a direct instruction from the child's parent).
The MTV Kids generation is all around us, drooling in their oh-so-expensive Gap Kids and Tommy H. wardrobes.
Part of the problem is, people are having kids, and they don't give a damn past the birth. There are a lot of affluent folk out there who just want the kids (and the dog) for show-- to prove that they're "good, family people;" there are a lot of less-affluent people that are having kids, and can't afford not to have the TV babysit for them. On the third hand, there are people who are having kids, and just don't give a rat's ass one way or the other.
Hey! Spacetruckers is the Dark Star of the Nineties! Yes, it had an astonishingly low budget, and it stole from any number of sources (anyone else notice that the pirate ship looked like a cross between Babylon 5 and Captain Harlock's ship?), but it was intentionally bad. There's a great deal of difference between going out of your way to make a terrible movie, and assembling a "fromage" to a pulp SF author.
First off, are the outside forces. In a nutshell, no-one particularly likes Quebec. The Atlantic provinces hate it, the central and Pacific provinces are ambivalent, and for the most part, the States really don't care one way or the other. Hell, even France knows well enough to keep out of Quebecois affairs.
Second, are the internal forces. Generally, there are two camps in Quebec: Francophones, and everyone else. The francophones have a very long history of declining birth-rates, and annoying everyone else. One of the instigators of the failed secession referendum has been quoted as saying: "We were beaten by money, and the ethnic vote." Cases in point include the Great Bear hydro-electric project (which would have flooded a gigantic area of northern Quebec, causing insane amounts of ecological damage), and the Oka crisis (in which the Q.gov sold a known Indian burial ground to a developer, to be made into a golf course. The resulting standoff lasted months). The Indians living in Quebec have made loud noises regarding a secession back into Canada should Quebec separate (which the Q.gov has tried to declare illegal... spot the irony). Just about every last non-francophone (and non-francophone business, both of which outnumber Quebecois by a significant margin) has plans to move out of the province, and others have plans to form guerrila militias to harass or overthow the Q.gov. In fact, the antics of one such militia (the Front Du Liberation Du Quebec, or FLQ) prompted the temporary institution of martial law.
Third, are the economic forces. Secession revolves around Quebec continuing to use the Canadian dollar, Quebecois having dual Quebec/Canadian citizenship, Quebec entering NAFTA, and a small host of other elements that would basically make Quebec into a sovereign parasite bisecting Canada at about the mid-thigh region. Needless to say, the odds of any of that happening are just about nil.
Oh, and besides all that, there's nothing "odd" about Shadowrun "predicting" Quebec's separation-- they've been making noises about it for-bloody-ever.
Amen to that. Oh, and forget about Shadowrun being some sort of prescient forerunner to our current perceived reality; everything in there (apart from the magic-is-back-and-the-Indians-have-taken-North-Ame rica-back part) is a theme that's been flying around since at least the birth of cyberpunk, which predates the original Shadowrun rules by a great deal of time.
Oh, and please don't get me started on Star Dreck.
Second, since the first episode is set in Japan, and the main character is presumably Japanese, and the old man is most certainly Japanese, it stands to reason that they may actually be speaking... wait for it... Japanese!
Now, following this line of reasoning, it can be safely assumed that the dialogue has been translated into English, possibly via Suspension of Disbelief. Since the dialogue is a translation of two native Japanese speakers conversing, the old man's confusion of "r" and "l" sounds would not have been translated through-- the sound differences are irrelevant in Japanese, and therefore irrelevant to the translation. Since his "r" and "l" sounds are confused, even after translation, it's patently obvious that this confusion was intentionally included; unfortunately, it's impossible to tell if its inclusion was supposed to provoke indignation, laughter, this rant, or even more controversy over Romero's apparent disconnection from reality.
Or perhaps a technological tombstone, a-la Trespasser.
As an aside, there's apparently a team working on an Unreal Tournament TC called "Marathon: Resurrection." Details are at Marathon: Resurrection, if anyone's interested.
Everything else on the list, go for it. Prepare to be confused by Utena, though.
Oh, yeah, while I'm at it: Silent Moebius (the movie). Weird girl/magic/SF anime.
Whoops, before I forget: definitely track down Tenchi Muyo! (the OAVs are available in a DVD collection), and El Hazard: The Magnificent World. Granted, they've both got strong sex-farce elements, but the animation is just effing gorgeous, and they're extremely well written.
Unfortunately, that statement reminds me of a post I saw on usenet a few years ago, asking about an anime involving "girls with gemstones or coloured things on their foreheads." Either could be used to describe at the very least a half-dozen separate shows, which leads me to my point. Rule of thumb for everyone out there: if you come across a cool anime, but you don't know what it is, find out! Search the house for the TV guide, check the channel's website, or even go so far as to tape half a minute to show to your local screaming otaku (chances are, he'll know what it is). If you don't, you'll probably be sorry.
Oh, yeah, and Gunsmith Cats is definitely anime. If you're into vehicular anime, try to track down a copy of "Riding Bean"; it's (s'far as I can recall) a prequel to GsC.
[pause for breath]
Get it, regardless. You'll thank yourself later.
Maybe this is Apogee's (note the gratuitous possessive) attempt to become relevant again-- their answer to Romero's "Suck it Down!"(tm). I really don't care one way or the other-- I haven't seen any good code come out of Apo-gee since they published Commander Keen 4. Thanks to this stunt, I'm going to walk up to every stranger I meet on the street, tell them that "Apogee sucks!", and convince them not to purchase Apogee products. If I can get through to even one person before they drag me off to the mental ward, then I will have made a difference.
I, and hopefully everyone else, am completely cognizant of the fact you pointed out above. It was this assumed universal cognizance, as well as the rather snarky additional comments ("non-breeding male", et al) that led me to assume that it would not be necessary to explicitly mark that section as sarcastic.
"As an added safeguard, any of it going for research will not have personal identifiers."
Okay, what about the data that has already been used for "research" purposes?
"The database includes information on everyone's address, education, marital status and ethnic origin. It also tracks a person's employment and social assistance history, and their income tax records."
Okay, just for the record: Address: foo@bar.ca; Education: enough to see through this garbage; Marital Status: Non-Breeding Male; Ethnic Origin: um, er, Canadian?; Employment, Social Assistance and Income Tax history: uh-uh, forget it-- there's no way I'll let the government have that information...
Are they really disposing of this information? Hell, no-- this is the Canadian government we're talking about. Jeez, the "opposition" is opposed to it only because they're not the party in power-- if the Tories get in after the next election, I can guarantee that this database will be reactivated, with a minimum of fanfare, and as much obfuscation that taxpayer's money can buy. No-one involved with the project really gives a damn about it getting hacked-- they're just waving ten-dollar words like "encryption" and "longitudinal" to confuse and pacify the proles until the next big government cack-up comes down the pipe (which will probably be in a week or two).
There was a greater spirit of community "helpfulness", too. A few years back, you could find a page that would have diagrams and downloads for whatever (case in point, patterns for medieval-style clothing, for SCA people). Nowadays, all you'll find are price lists and Sales Associate links to Amazon & co.
While there isn't anything in the specs regarding denial of access for refusing their SuperCookie, there are a number of sites currently extant that will refuse to deal with you for not allowing them to drop a cookie on your browser-- several banks, and Bell Canada, to name just a few. All these sites have to do is change their normal cookies over to the new spec, and 999 out of 1000 visitors will hand over their info without blinking.
Closer to home, a friend who works at a local programming-house regaled me with the tale of how they had to send a PC Stateside to be checked out (they write device drivers for high-end video-capture systems, and any serious hardware issues have to be dealt with by the manufacturer's techies); when it was returned, they discovered that the kids at Customs had opened it up (maybe they were searching for contraband copies of Omaha the Cat Dancer), let it get about half-filled with styrofoam packing peanuts (you know, the ones that hold a charge for longer than your average battery), and then put the case back on-- securing it with one of the originally six screws (perhaps they caught the other five portraying prurient images of anal sex). Needless to say, my friend and his co-workers were furious (and rather fortunate that the system was still functioning).
Now, back to the topic. Am I surprised that HR has a database like that? Not at all. Am I surprised by any numb-witted stunt that any Canadian political organization does? Not at all. Do I trust them not to fsck up, and distribute my data to anyone who asks? Again, not at all. Is anything going to be done about it? Nope-- unless, of course, someone wants to stage a daring night-time commando raid to destroy their hard-drives and backups (assuming, of course, that their database doesn't still only exist in hard-copy). Am I angry about this? You betcha. I don't collect air-miles, I surf with an old copy of Atguard, and I pay for almost everything with cash-- granted, it's a bit more of a pain, and I'm not getting the "rewards" that I could be, but since I'm trying to reduce my trail (both paper and electronic), I feel that I have some right to complain about the skulduggery being perpetrated on me.
Finally, I have one question: what is going to happen to this database? Will it be shared with other agencies (perhaps to "reduce redundancy")? Will it be (gods forbid) sold to a third party? Or are they going to post all of it to the net, like Canada411?